Shields is a digital pantograph design by Jess Zeigler (that's me!) for Longarm League.

I find myself frequently recommending pantos comprised of simple shapes, especially for quilt tops that have a lot of piecing, color, and/or fabrics. I find these simpler quilting designs to be the most versatile because they have a way of bringing calm and a cohesive element to a "busy" top. They lend beautiful texture without complicating the quilt.

This little motif reminded me of an abstract and somewhat asymmetrical shield. Or scales. Panning out and looking at the overall effect resembled a braid of some kind. 

As you can see from the video of the stitch-out at the top of this post, there is only a tiny bit of backtracking. When you set up the design in your computerized system, it does not need any offsetting.

When quilting this baby-sized sample approximately 45" x 50", I set the row height at 2.5" and used a gap of -0.512" for a total pattern height of 3.012". I ...

This design called Fancy Feathers is a digital pantograph design that was released to Longarm League members in February 2020. Our designs are not exclusive to members, though. Anyone can buy our pantographs from our shop. 

My story as a longarm quilter began by operating a non-computerized APQS machine. I was able to apply the quilting motifs I had practiced so hard to master on my domestic sewing machine by "translating" them to free-motion quilting on a longarm. This feather design came about from yet again "translating" the fmq design to a digital, repeatable pantograph. 

I really wanted to make the rows as invisible as possible, and so I created diamond-like repeats. This means that when setting up the design digitally, every other row needs to be offset at 50% and then nested closely so the gaps aren't too obvious.

I think the multidirectional feathers help disguise the repeats and the rows. The dynamic feathers—some are big and long, some are small and...

In this demonstration, we'll talk about the Tweak function for Intelliquilter. Tweak is perfect for expanding or contracting a pantograph to fit a space. I tend to use this for dense pantograph designs or ones that need to match up precisely. 

The digital pantograph design I'm using in the video is called Fancy Feathers. I thought this one would be a good example to use for demonstration purposes because it's a dense design and it requires every other row to be offset at 50%.  When I first started learning how to use the Tweak function, I could not figure out how to make it work when the rows required offsetting! So, what I'm saying is that if you learn it this way, the steps for using Tweak will be even more straightforward when working with a digital pantograph that requires no offsetting. :) 

Before we even start stitching, let's talk about the initial setup of the quilt in IQ.

I select Pantograph and then Enter Rectangle Manually. I usually add a full 10" to both the width and the he...

'Business Builders' are members that have already started their longarm quilting business but are looking for ways to optimize their systems or grow their client base.

On the third Wednesday of each month, our Business Builders meet for a Group Call. We meet via Zoom so that it's interactive, but then we also record the calls so that anyone who is unable to attend the live meeting can watch later. Anyone who joins the Longarm League at the Business Builder level can access our whole library of previously published lessons and recorded calls. 

Today was our one year anniversary of adding the Group Call feature. In the last year, we've covered the following topics:

• easing the fullness of a quilt
• additional income streams
• cloud-based accounting
• Profit First
• creating a brand
• collaborating with designers
• search engine optimization (SEO) for beginners
• small business taxes
• running multiple longarm machines
• common Instagram mistakes
• Sew Tites Magnum magnets and other loading methods
...

Geoglyph is a large 120" wide x 12" tall extended-width design. Watch the video above for just one example of how to use this design file. I think you'll see how many permutations are possible!

For more information about extended-width designs, check out our blog post here.

You'll see this in the video, but when I imported the design, it was resized by Intelliquilter to have a row height of about 7". I scaled to 100% for the row height of 12" before I began placing the blocks. Make sure to maintain the ratio of the design to avoid distortion and clip or trim away the part of the design that's not needed when you actually quilt it out.

To give you an idea of the density of the designs at 12", the spacing of the lines ranged from 1/2" to 1", so there is room to scale up or down depending on the density you'd like to accomplish. The wholecloth baby quilt I stitched out shown above is roughly 43" x 53".

There's no backtracking and blocks do not have to be placed precisely unless...